Drew Smith takes time to do a video chat with his family before Super Bowl XLV

While it’s been a privilege to cover the Super Bowl, our trip has kept us away from our families since last weekend.

With a few hours between our live pre-game show and the game, some of our crew took the opportunity to check in with their families. Drew Smith used Skype to do a video chat with his wife and daughters. And Todd, one of our photojournalists did a little texting with his wife and young daughter – who was sending messages of random letters because she’s too young to understand how to text.

Paige Pearson, who’s sitting on my left, just commented on how much she misses her boyfriend.

So while we’re excited for the game, we’re also looking forward to seeing family again back home.

Well, not trains so much. But we’ve spent a lot of time on the other two.

Our departure from the station didn’t quite go as planned. Seemed the car we rented wasn’t nearly big enough for four people packed for a week, along with our camera equipment. So we ended up taking a station vehicle and leaving it in Milwaukee. Best-laid plans, right? Oh well, if it’s the worst thing to happen on this trip, we’ll be lucky.

Our flight was on time and pretty uneventful. Lots of Packer fans, and some of the crew from FOX 6 in Milwaukee. Oh, and we got cookies.

So now we’re waiting for our bags and then grabbing our rental cars (2 this time) and heading for the hotel. Looking forward to meeting up with the rest of our crew and starting our work.